


Same Ghost Every Night

by ShastaFirecracker



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel in Purgatory, Dean Prays to Castiel, Gen, M/M, Prayer, Purgatory, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-14
Updated: 2015-07-14
Packaged: 2018-04-09 09:06:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4342478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShastaFirecracker/pseuds/ShastaFirecracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I prayed to you, Cas, every night."</p>
<p>"I know."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Same Ghost Every Night

It isn't like anywhere Castiel has ever been before, and he has been in places a human mind could barely comprehend. To his vessel's dull senses, it looks like a forest, but he is not fooled. There is a vast and monstrous instability to this place, a boiling not-here that is more real than the branch poking into his vessel's slippered instep or the hot breeze that gusts across his face. There are roaches under the wallpaper. The walls are breathing.

He feels them instantly, Leviathan; it is mutual; frequencies resonate, quantum entangling; his gut aches remembering them inside. They shriek in glee. His divinity is a beacon and – Dean turns to face him; Dean is in the center of the spotlight. Panic overwhelms. At the edge of his senses he registers an immediate threat, eyes in the trees, but it is nothing compared with the carnivorous sludge roiling in their direction through the not-here.

He wants to tell Dean but there's no time, no time. He feels for his power, finds it intact.

He runs.

-

The first prayer comes almost immediately. Castiel flies, wingbeats ragged, breath sharp, Leviathan behind him, a howl growing like the roar of a train, but there is a _tug_ that cuts through it all – a bright hot speck that prickles in the middle of his mind, a pull his instincts tell him to follow. An angel's purpose is to answer prayer. An angel's calling is to defend and serve. Prayer is an act of vulnerability, a baring of the throat, an extended hand; prayer to a specific angel, by name, is an intimacy Castiel has never explained to Dean. He thinks that if Dean knows, he might stop. Castiel doesn't want him to stop.

In his center of gravity, he feels Dean call to him. In his core, he feels Dean _need_ him. It's a pain that he treasures.

There aren't clear words, just a coursing terror overlaid with intent like white noise: _cascaswhereareyoucasgonegoneneedyoubackwheredyougohelphelphelpdangerplease._ But he can't follow Dean's prayer now, with Leviathan crushing trees and polluting waters behind him. He pushes harder than he has in years, and thinks about that first incursion into Hell, when he'd rescued Dean's soul.

He'd been stronger then. Armored. Backed by a force of hundreds of angels, bolstered with glorious purpose, ablaze with mission. He'd flown hard and fast and accurate into the fire, and barely even gotten scalded on the way out.

The heat of Hell is a punishment, an extreme. It's meant to be experienced acutely and eternally, the pain never dulling. The heat of Purgatory is different – a drain, meant to sap intent and destroy endeavor. It's a crushing lethargy, a reminder that to be in Purgatory is not a punishment, is not a reward, but just _is:_ Purgatory is where bestial souls go to continue existing, purposeless, directionless, without hunger or pain, without sorrow or joy, a state of eternal gray non-death. It feels thick here. Slow. Pointless.

Cas' wings are ragged and dull these days, and he fights to keep moving, even while every atom of him wants to be dragged down. He pushes until he fears he has nothing left to give. The bright spark of Dean's prayer and a bitter core of fear keep him focused. To give into lethargic despair is one thing – but to let himself by taken by Leviathan is another entirely. For Dean's sake and his own, that can't happen.

Eventually, eventually, when he's far beyond his limits, he feels Leviathan begin to fall back. He tumbles deliriously off-course, pulls his wings in tight, tamps down hard on his divinity. Gasping and ruined, he stumbles to the trunk of an enormous tree, falls against it with his hands outstretched, and sinks down.

The tree isn't real, the bed of leaf mold isn't real, and Castiel doesn't need to sleep, but... there's a softness under his knees, a fog around his mind. He sinks further, knees to the side, bent over double, a wreck of a seraph poorly wrapped inside a wreck of a body, neither quite whole. He no longer cares that the trees are a thin skin of reality stretched taut over a staggering nothingness. The leaf mold, to his human hands, is soft. The tree trunk, to his human scalp, is firm and supporting.

He can't resist the weight of this place any more, not coupled with his own exhaustion. Curled like a withered leaf, still and quiet, in the hot dark of Purgatory, Castiel sleeps.

-

_Castiel, who art in Purgatory, hallowed be thy ugly-ass coat._

Castiel's eyes snap open. He's lying on the ground. He pushes upright, pulls his feet under himself in a lotus position.

_You better be listening, Cas. I know something grabbed you. Maybe it was Dick, maybe it was a one of the other billion things we've pissed off by killing 'em and sending 'em here, but no way would you just ditch me. So I need you to hear me, man – I'm gonna find you. I don't even know where to start with getting out of this dump, but I know I ain't doing it alone. If you can hear me, try to get to me – not like I can give you directions, but – maybe you can feel – I dunno. I don't know._

Castiel closes his eyes, the prayer settling like a lead weight inside his chest.

_Please, Cas. Please come back._

A fine thread of intent draws out long after the words themselves have faded. Castiel knows that feeling – it's Dean thinking about saying something more, thinking hard but deciding against it, drifting into silence with some important truth unspoken. Castiel could pry, but never has. He could know, for certain, what it is that Dean never says, but part of him doesn't want to know, and part of him already does.

-

Keeping his divinity tightly under wraps helps to keep him hidden, but slip-ups happen. He can suppress his power but he's still like a floodlight bundled up in gauze. The faint glow of his grace eats away at the pallid landscape around him; he'll stop to rest and wake atop a pile of clean ash, or lean against a tree only to find himself sinking into it, his mere touch destroying the thin skin of false matter. The nature of what he is is inimical to the nature of Purgatory. They eat at each other like a corrosive chemical reaction.

All he can do is keep moving, barely touching the world around him, making every effort to leave no witnesses to his passage. He can't risk smiting, but strength suffices. If he leaves a bloody trail behind him, it goes unnoticed in the general carnage.

He supposes he could remove his own grace. Leave it behind, shining bright, calling all the monsters to it. He only supposes this in the darkest corners of his mind, in the bleakest wastelands of his own exhaustion, because quite frankly it's suicide. He doesn't know what would happen – if, like Anna, he would somehow be reborn elsewhere, or if Purgatory would simply consume the pieces of him and leave no trace. Or, perhaps, he might die but his grace might linger, to be found and used by other... things.

There are times when he almost doesn't care.

In the starless dark of what passes for nighttime, Castiel walks alone between the trees, eyes closed. He doesn't need to see the flimsy construct around him to navigate it. He walks slowly, barely lifting his feet.  
He puts a hand to his chest, and after a while he drifts to a stop. His fingertips sink fractionally into his flesh with a rippling pale glow. He stays like that.

_Cas,_ says Dean's voice, deep inside him. _Breaker breaker, whatever. You there? Ah, fuck... man, I hate this place. What I wouldn't give for a cold beer. Or cold water. Or just one damn ice cube, you know? Christ. Listen, I'm just... checking in, I guess. If you could talk, you would. I'm still looking, Cas. I'll find you. Just hang in there._

Castiel stands frozen for another moment. Then he slides his fingers free. His hand drops to his side.

In the distance, he hears a howl like a train.

He takes a labored breath and keeps walking.

-

Some prayers come without words.

Hiding never lasts. A stray witness here, a momentary lapse in concentration there. Somehow, always, Leviathan will get a bead on Cas and come roiling along the leylines of the not-here, champing and chittering with glee. He has to fly again and again, sometimes stopping to beat back scouting forces, sometimes managing to lose them for days and weeks at a time. It's not as though Leviathan has anything better to do – Purgatory is nothing but an eternal bloodsport and Leviathan is the reigning champion. Castiel is probably the most entertaining quarry it's had in eons.

Cas keeps dragging himself onward. Not getting caught is paramount, because Leviathan's second most wanted is sure to be Dean. Dean gave the killing blow, after all. But Cas – well – Cas gave Leviathan freedom, then took it away again. They were once one being, once spoke with one voice. Cas muzzled it, held its reins for longer than nearly any other being in creation. It knows Cas by every face and feather and frequency.

Leviathan died with Cas' blood in its throat. As long as Cas remains a target, Leviathan won't care about anything else.

Castiel is flying hard, straining for speed and breath against the gelatinous resistance of this place, when a jolt of _need_ hits him square in the heart. He loses control and spins out, slamming into constructed trees, tucking and stretching his wings frantically to regain his course, but it's too late. Oily impacts rain down around him like a meteor shower. One hits his wing, sends him crashing down towards open jaws and constructed parodies of human businessmen. Leviathan's little joke.

He has blade in hand and is fighting hard before he even fully touches ground, but the whole time he's fighting for his life he can still feel the foreign spark of need pulsing like a heartbeat. No words, but there's a certain... texture, a tone of voice, a color. A mossy green.

Time is not particularly relevant here, but Cas is sure that hours pass in bloody combat before he manages to escape again. He isn't even sure he did escape – it feels just as likely that Leviathan let him go, to elongate the play. As if it's a killer whale and Cas is an injured seal. As he staggers free, he hardly cares.

The call that had startled him into falling in the first place is still there – fainter and duller now. The sheer supernova of need has dispersed, shot through with traces of guilt and anger and regret and grief.

Cas sags against a tree, hands black with oil. It's all he can do to keep breathing. The prayer, such as it is, has a rhythm like the rise and fall of lungs in sleep.

Cas squeezes his eyes closed and listens to the distant echoes of Dean's dreams.

-

_Hey, Cas. Stardate whatever, time who cares. Purgatory still sucks ass. Hey. Cas? Get all Biblical and send me a sign, man._

_Okay. I'll keep trying. Please tell me you are, too._

_Cas, I'm assuming the medieval werewolf pack wasn't the sign? If it was, then fuck you, buddy. But, uh, guessing not._

_Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to Castiel my soul to assist in getting out of the shitholes it keeps landing in. Come on, Cas. I'm running out of leads here. I know you're out there... I know..._

_Fuck._

_This feels so 'dear diary.' Dear Cas. No idea if you can hear me. No idea what time it is, what day. No seasons here, no weather. I'm running on empty, man. I'm so tired, and I just... it's this place. This place doesn't_ want _me here. Does that make any sense? Christ, I wish you were here to dump some metaphysics technobabble on me. I wish you were here, period._

_Find me. Find me, Cas, 'cause I can't find you._

-

Castiel cannot fly above the trees. In a fit of delirious thirst, he tries – he goes up, up, up, until the ground is far out of sight – he thirsts for a clean breath of air, for a momentary coolness, for a change in air pressure or a thin veil of humidity. But there aren't any clouds because there isn't any sky. The trees, unreal as they are, are merely a representation of the uniform sameness of Purgatory. There is no end to them. After a time Cas can't tell if he's going up or down. He closes his eyes to cut off the unecessary and bewildering input of sight, and simply feels the quantum structure of the space around him, trying to get a bearing. He feels nothing.  
He crashes into the ground, tumbles along in an uncontrolled roll until he slides to a stop in a pile of leaves that aren't really here.

He opens his eyes and stares at them as they slowly crumble into ash under his fingers.

-

_Remember your whole bee thing, Cas? I hate bugs. Really hate 'em. You know, roaches aren't even the worst in a motel room, 'cause at least they want to stay out of your way. Worst is ants, maybe. Bedbugs. Nah, ants. Get everywhere, smell like a chemical spill when you squash 'em. Feel their stupid little claws crawling all over you for days._

_I guess you were right about bees, though. Don't do anything, just... dance and booze it up. Keep the world green and spinning._

_I'd kill to see a bee again, man._

-

Castiel rarely opens his eyes any more. He pays no heed to his vessel or its appearance. He can sense where Leviathan is relative to his position, and he can sense where Dean is, and that's enough. He leads the merry chase away from the white-gold thread of prayer, stretching it farther and longer and thinner.

-

_Cas, I made an ally. Made a deal, I guess. You know how well deals go for us... but don't worry, I got my eye on him. I won't let my guard down. He's agreed to help me track you before we head to this escape hatch he knows about. It's – I'm trying not to get my hopes up here, but it's the best damn news I've had in a while. Anyway... trust me, Cas, I won't go leaving before I find you. If you can hear me, just... just know I won't leave you behind._

-

Castiel finds a stream.

It's broad, meandering, and endless. It's as real as the trees, as real as the sky, but despite that, he can't help being drawn to it. The water has some semblance of a liquid texture. It's the same temperature as the air, hardly refreshing in any sense, but the fact that it's something _different_ makes it almost impossible to walk away from. Because of this, Cas realizes that it's a trap. An irresistable treat that draws monsters together into inevitable slaughter.

The warm water tastes coppery and astringent.

_Got another lead,_ says Dean. _If you can, stay where you are. I'm coming for you._

Cas retreats from the stream, tracking wet footprints over the leaves, towards the thickest trees. The prints dry almost at once and leave no trace.

-

He moves slower now, worn to the bone, reluctant to fly. He creeps through the forest and leaves more witnesses than he should. He hasn't heard Leviathan's toothy chitter or oily gurgle in so long that he could almost believe it's forgotten about him, rather than just lulling him, which is most certainly what it's doing. He's too tired to care.

Dean's voice is his only balm. He lets himself slow to listen, sometimes stopping altogether. The more he focuses on each prayer, the stronger the connection becomes. It spills out of him in rivulets of light and purpose, fills his footprints as he walks. When he stops, monsters flock and orbit around him like moths too scared to make the final, fatal approach to a flame. A few do. He burns them out – a mercy.

He keeps moving, but he stays close to the stream, sometimes returning to it just to feel the bloody water sliding through his fingers and between his toes. There's no more life at the stream than there is anywhere else, but the false water holds a pretended promise of life. Cas walks along, looking at it, hating it for what it isn't, craving it for what it resembles.

-

_Cas, I know where you are. I'm coming._

-

The coppery water trickles down his face, leaving him no cleaner than before.

“Cas!”

He closes his eyes, then glances down into the water. Ripples. His reflection is too broken to see. He looks out across the stream and knows that he could have stopped this. He could have stopped a lot of things, a long, long time ago.

He didn't want to.

Slowly he rises. “Dean,” he says quietly, the first word he's spoken since he fled.

Dean scrambles down the hill towards him, followed at a distance by a shadowed figure Castiel immediately recognizes as the spirit of a vampire. “Cas,” Dean calls again, striding close. His face is alight with joy and relief. He throws his arms around Castiel with a laugh. “Damn, it's good to see you.”

The prayer is joined, purpose fulfilled. A hollow place inside Castiel floods with light. He resists returning Dean's affection with every ounce of his considerable being, tries to rein in the nuclear burst of angelic presence, but it's far too late. Behind Dean, the vampire gives Cas a sour look. He can feel it, too, like standing close to a sun. Mortal that he is, Dean is oblivious.

_Found you,_ pulses a white-gold whisper, steeped in a feeling Cas won't name.

In the wild vastness of not-here that is Purgatory, Castiel hears a distant, oily, chittering laugh.

 

_I go walking just to find_  
my own breath, my own breath through the path  
it was strange  
constant blue  
and the same ghost every night 


End file.
